#I am aiming to make a graphic novel about them :)

[cobaltswirl]

Introducing the current subjects of my brainrot: Ami (left), and Lester (right). Ami is a (LET ME COOK) male missile, and Lester's his friend. They are part of my... for the lack of a better name... "Missileverse".

[neonkomi]

Hello fictoromantics and selfshippers!

I am currently finishing the first three chapters of my webtoon about fictoromance, which will be release in November 2024.

I have an active survey where you can tell me about your experience with fictoromance and your fictional character! I'm especially interested in hearing how you include them in your daily life and what are your thoughts on the nature of your relationship.

I plan to write a long webtoon, so thank you for your patience, my aim is to look at different versions of fictoromance, for girls and women especially.

I hope to hear from you soon!

-Neon-

[wibixthecowboy]

Play the Song: Chapter 12: As we Breathe

Task Force 141 needs a new sniper and despite their complaints, they're assigned Flash, a joke-making, ABBA-listening, 20-year-old sharpshooter with better aim than the whole team combined. In other words, Ghost is practically handed the love of his life but he needs time to adjust because she's a firecracker.

Warnings/Tags: !graphic depictions of panic attacks!, references to suicide attempts (no descriptions), references to SA (no descriptions), Age gap (20/30-32), gore, descriptions of injury/blood/wounds, justified angst, tooth rotting fluff, slow burn, protective ghost, family dynamic, big brother soap has an attitude problem, father figure Price, wholesome brother Gaz, touch starved Ghost, eventual smut, praise, choking, thigh riding, unprotected (wrap it up people), size kink, oral f receiving, ghost will do anything to get his dick sucked, idk I’m sure it will get dirtier as I go, shifting POV  

A/N: I know what you all want and I am here to give it to you. Enjoy my two, severely emotionally underdeveloped loves interacting in (somewhat) non-deadly scenarios. 

Words: 6.7k

Side note: All of these characters are fictional! Please don’t be weird about their real life actors, leave them out of this and be respectful!

Part 1  Part 2  Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12

Tag list: @urfavsunkissedleo @butskii @abbiesxox @itsasecrets-things @thatonewriterthatnooneknows @copiasratscheese​ @Sheviro-blog

★Flash

     “Will you just take the fucking applesauce?” Gaz’s voice is bordering a whine and Flash doesn’t feel the least bit guilty when she declines again. She is hungry, but her hunger doesn’t outweigh her need for entertainment. For something other than the dusty novel she’d snatched from Price weeks ago and the small window to her left.

For the last three days, she’s been stuck in her bed. Her only solace being short trips to the bathroom and the horrible nurse service being provided in shifts by Soap and Gaz. Both arrive either so guilt ridden or angry that their conversations are reduced to mumbled words.

After she’d passed out in the truck- passed out, not died, (a correction she’s had to make every time Soap decides to give her another rundown of what he likes to call her ‘Rick Grimes’ moment) the team was able to stop enough of the bleeding and get her to the nearest med bay before her heart stopped pumping.

She’d been kept sedated for the next four days, lulled into a hazy half conscious state by a concoction of epinephrine, morphine, and god knows what else. The magic drug- a more advanced and highly addictive form of a stim shot, had practically healed everything. By the third night, she’d been able to lay on her back without pain, and by the fourth, her injuries were reduced to bruising and two half healed and itching cuts on her shoulder blades and forehead. When the doctors had given her the order to ‘take it easy’ and ‘stay in bed for a few more days’ she’d nearly laughed in their faces. But after an awkward ride back to the base with Price, it was made clear that she’d be on her ass until the doctors cleared her.

Since then, she’s been rotting away in bed. With the fog of a rather severe concussion gone and only a slight wobble in her step, Flash felt confident enough to get back into training. Others, not so much.

“Stop coddling me and I just might.” Her words, although bitter, are spoken through a half smile. The joints of her legs ache with the need to move. She can’t remember the last time she’d gone longer than a day without some sort of physical exercise.

“Oh for fucks sake. Just take it.” Gaz lets out a frustrated groan and tosses the container and spoon at her blanketed legs. They land just shy of the unread paperback by her shin. A copy of ‘True Grit’ that Price had silently handed to her after she’d begged him to let her join their next raid. “Maybe Ghost will spoon feed it to you if you ask nicely enough.”

His hand freezes against the door handle and Flash’s eyes widen. That was the first Ghost had been mentioned since the incident. After his freak out. No one had spoken to her about it, so she didn’t bring it up. Other than foggy memories of him sleeping in a chair next to her bed at the med bay- his head lolled to the side in a way that made her knees weak. Ghost had been absent.

“Just eat the food.” Gaz says nothing more before slipping from her room and shutting the door gently behind him.

Guilt coils her stomach into a tight knot and the game that she’d been playing for the last few days loses its appeal.

The applesauce is dull and pasty, and when she swallows, it sticks in her throat like mud. The first night she’d woken up from her drugged sleep, she willed her memory to clear, to give her a picture of Ghost’s face that wasn’t blurred with tears and blood loss. But it was useless. After that, avoiding thinking about the last few moments in the truck had been easy. Until now.

Although every sense of hers had been compromised, her brain had no problem recalling every point of contact that Ghost had made. As if her body remembering the gentle way he held her hand against his cheek was more important than remembering to breathe. As if it still is. The healing drugs didn’t touch the burns left by his desperate hands.

The scraping of her spoon against the nearly empty plastic cup does nothing to drown out the now crashing waves of memories. Him grasping at her legs and shoulders to haul her to the truck, begging her to keep her eyes open, removing his mask. The last bite of her applesauce tastes of brine and copper and it gags her. When she coughs the skin of her hand comes back splattered with shining red. Stumbling to the bathroom, Flash drops to the blessedly cool tile in front of the toilet but the food weighs heavily in her stomach, refusing to move despite the foul taste in her mouth. When she looks down there’s a splatter of pureed apple across her right hand where the blood stained just moments ago.

Avoiding her two mirrors, Flash rinses her hands, ties her hair back, and changes her clothes for the first time in three days. She needs out, and god help anyone who tries to stop her.

_____

     The hot Las Almas sun burns the sensitive skin of Flash’s scabbed and stitched shoulders and sends a steady stream of sweat gliding down her spine that drops to the dusty dirt road just a few minutes from their base. She’d found it while stalking Ghost on one of his runs after a dull morning of training. Now it serves as the perfect place for her to slip away unnoticed and run until her feet bleed.

She’d been going for about an hour already, entranced by the steady thump of her braid against her back as she let the hot afternoon sun dry the waves that so violently threatened to pull her under. An angry, clouding storm of failure covers every expanse of her mind. She’d failed the one chance she’d been given. Price had finally given her an in, a way to prove what she’d so desperately been trying to show them, and she’d blown it in less than an hour.

A familiar crunch of tires sounds from behind her and she moves to the edge of the rough dirt road, giving the truck room to pass, but it slows to match her pace. When she glances over, she nearly stumbles on a loose stone. Ghost is sat in the driver's seat, one arm steering at the base of the wheel and the other holding a bottle of water out the window.

“You don’t have to say anything, just take the water and I’ll leave.” His voice is withdrawn, quiet in a way that tells Flash that he understands her need for silence. And when she takes the bottle from his bare hand, the faded scars only prove her right.

He watches her drink and she pretends not to notice as the water wets her parched mouth and throat. When she finishes that one, he gently pulls it from her grasp and another is pressed into her empty hand. Flash sips this time, breathing deeply between swallows, catching the breath she hadn’t noticed she’d lost. His gaze falls to her shaking knees and the shivering of her strained thighs and she waits for him to admonish her, to order her back to the base and put a padlock on the door this time, but he only turns away to set the empty bottle somewhere in the back seat.

“Do you want to drive with me?”

The question catches her off guard. The softness with which its spoken, still detached and hesitant but sentimental nonetheless. She opens her mouth to deny, admit that she’s ran this far to be alone, but the aching in her chest tugs towards him like a magnet.

Silently, she rounds the car, slides into the passenger seat, and Ghost continues driving wordlessly down the path, at a leisurely unhurried speed. With the windows down, the hair that had fallen from her braid flutters around her face in the light wind, tickling the bare and damp skin of her neck. She licks the dry skin of her lips and tastes the salt beaded at the bow of her mouth.

The slow roll of sand dunes calms the racing of her heart and she syncs her breathing to their soft shapes, in with the incline and out with the descent. Her sweat slick legs stick uncomfortably to the warm leather seat but the relief of resting her strained muscles surpasses the discomfort.

Flash closes her eyes against the bright setting sun, oranges and yellows shine brightly in the sudden darkness and the knot in her stomach loosens enough that she can fill her lungs completely. Fresh air, spun with the sappy golden light spilling across the desert blows across her face and cools the twin trails trickling over the curves of her cheeks. Salt spreads across her tongue, but this time it carries something much heavier. They come faster now, rivulets running and turning into streams that course over her chin and down her neck, bleeding into the sweat soaked collar of her shirt. She doesn’t open her eyes as the crushing weight of the fear she’d felt sets in. So she cries. She cries for what could have happened, what would have happened if she hadn’t pulled herself from the water, and hates every second of it.

Then a warm hand is nudging her own. Ghost, in a silent mimic of her gesture from days before, wraps his smallest finger around her own and squeezes. The fear lessens, pulling back to a dull throb against her ribcage. She doesn’t open her eyes as she unwraps their pinkies and slides her hand into his to lock their fingers in a tight hold. His hand envelops her own, warm and comforting, and she fastens herself to him like a tether to a dock. Afraid that if she lets go she just might drift out of reach.

They say nothing as they cling to each other, and Flash doesn’t dare turn her now open eyes to Ghost, afraid that she’ll snap their tether by acknowledging it. So she keeps her gaze on the pinks and purples sprawled across the dimming sky and tries to ignore the burning disappointment when one final turn brings the familiar concrete building into view.

“Can we do one more loop, I can’t- I-” She begins to ask, faltering when Ghost obliges without hesitation. And a burning sense of endearment spreads so quickly through her that the stinging behind her eyes recedes. Blinking away the thick tears still lining her lids, Flash sniffs once and then sags further into her seat.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

His question is a formal invitation, an obligated question. One she’s been asked on multiple occasions and refused each time. She could ignore it now and it wouldn’t be brought back up, she knows that for a fact. But whether it's the burning need to confess or the lack of social interaction, Flash feels the confession loose from her mouth in a stream that she can’t seem to stop.

“I killed him with a rock.” Even though the words are spoken by her, the depravity of the statement makes her heart stutter. “When I missed with my knife I just smashed his head in with a rock.” The memory flashes through her mind, a stunted and bloody reel of pictures. “It was too easy.”

A long stretch of silence fills the space between them and Flash can’t help but worry he’ll slam on the breaks and shove her out, tell her just how damaged she must be to resort to something so animalistic, so beyond human norm. The weight of his hand in hers grows cold and she has the sudden urge to tuck herself into the small space at her feet, away from the heavy words floating between them and the piercing blue eyes at her side.

“When you know someone coming to kill you Flash, everything turns primal. It’s not something you learn through lectures. I’m sorry you had to learn so quickly.” His words are like a balm to her nerves. Petting back the raised hackles of her mind. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t there to stop it.”

“It’s the SAS Ghost. Things happen. I won't always have someone there to save the day.” She speaks firmly but turns to Ghost with a sad smile, the action has the dried tracks of her tears itching. When she brings her empty hand up to wipe her cheeks, the dirt lining her fingers has her squeezing it back under her thigh.

He lapses back into his familiar silence and Flash tries not to think about the dirt wiping from her hand onto his own clean skin where their palms meet. Then becomes increasingly aware of the dust clinging to her thighs and arms and how it rubs off onto the dark surfaces of the truck. Ghost doesn’t say anything. His unoccupied hand taps lightly against the steering wheel, another quirk that Flash quickly learned meant he was picking his words carefully.

“Knowing something is going to happen doesn’t make it any easier to cope with.” The tires crunch as dirt turns into gravel, they’re just minutes away from the base now.

His words, although validating in their own way, crack open a spot in her steeled mind that she is nowhere near ready to unravel. So instead of responding, she closes her eyes and lays back against the seat, focusing on holding the now cool night air in her lungs. She grips Ghost’s hand steadfastly. When they pull into the lot this time, her mind feels clearer and when she releases his hand to go inside, she feels a little less broken.

_____

★Ghost

     Although her eyes are focused on Price, taking in every word he speaks with an endearing efficiency, Ghost still watches them. Searching for the voided, lost look that most recruits adopted after their first incident. The look that he’d seen hints of while driving with her hours before. But the blue remains sharp as they scan the layout of the next warehouse they’d be raiding. A dilapidated barn just a few miles from Alejandro’s ranch. They would leave tomorrow to spend the next two days planning their approach with Alejandro and his team. His bag, packed the moment he got back from their drive, waits next to his door. It was his desperate attempt to keep himself in his room. To keep himself busy so he didn’t cross through the bathroom and to Flash’s door to press his ear against the wood. Just to make sure she was still there, still breathing.

It was easy to brush off at first. The shaking was from strained muscles and elevated heart rate from his morning jog. But that day, when she’d come over the hill looking half dead, still clutching a bloodied rock, the fear, and dread that gagged him was undeniable. The anxiety that shook his experienced hands as he attempted to wrap unwilling bandages over a seemingly unending expanse of flowing blood was beyond uncharacteristic. Soap had taken the gauze from his hands and shoved him to the side, working with Gaz to stop the bleeding. Her clouded, half-lidded gaze had sent him into a shaking, gasping sort of fit and it was Soap who had ripped the pill bottle from Ghost’s pocket and shoved two of the pills into his palm with shaking, bloodied hands before returning to monitoring Flash’s heart rate.

After getting her to the med bay and stabilized, he’d remained at her side for the entire stay. The gentle flutter of her eyelashes was his only respite as she drifted in and out of a drugged sleep. The only time he left her side was to slip into the staff bathroom and to down another cup of the never-ending supply of dirt instant coffee the front office kept. Price had ordered him back to the base hours before she was to be taken off the sedative. It was a short exchange over the phone, gruff, tired, and ending in a snapped command.

When Price returned with her that night, Ghost had been waiting in the window. He wasn’t sure what his plan was, but when he saw the way Price had to practically lift her from the passenger seat and brace her as she limped to the door, he’d retreated back to his room, unable to look at the bandages at her temple, ones he wasn’t capable of tying. Instead choosing to curl against his headboard and choke on uneven breaths until a drug haze pulled him under.

Looking at her now, nothing like the small girl, pale skinned and drowned in hospital blankets, the beating of his heart doesn’t slow. Soap, next to him, is doodling small flowers on the mission summary and Gaz sitting beside Flash, is tugging at her sleeve. After one particularly harsh tug, she whips around in her chair and levels him with a harsh glare, when she goes to turn back, her eyes catch his. The irritation melts from her brow and Ghost struggles to keep his breath steady when his gaze drops to the blue-green bruise that still curves along her cheekbone. Flash catches his line of sight and lets the hair tucked behind her ear fall into her face, covering the bruising entirely when she turns back to Price. But the image remains, permanently branded against the large corner of his mind she’s always occupying.

They go on like that for the rest of the meeting. Eyes occasionally meeting only to hover for a moment before flitting away. Acting like he hadn’t just watched her shatter in the small cab of his truck an hour before. He knew better than to push though, the need to just forget was more familiar to him than it should be. So he watches her take notes instead, careful little words in the spaces between paragraphs with a pencil he now recognizes as his own. Stolen from the space next to his paper, he hadn’t even noticed. And despite everything, amusement flickers in his chest, and a familiar warmth tightens his ribs. Ghost dips his head down to level his eyes with Flash, glancing at the pencil in her hands and up to her waiting gaze. She smiles at him. It’s half done, morphed into a slight grimace from the split in her lip, but it still carries her usual air of mischief. And he thinks that maybe, things might be okay.

_____

★Flash

     Flash is brushing her teeth when she sees Ghost again. Her hair still damp and curling from the shower she’d taken to scrub the dried sweat and dust from her skin. She’d also braved a look in the mirror. A small blue-purple bruise curves along her skin between her cheekbone and eye, a half healed split at her lower lip, and a stitched line at her temple were all that remained of her encounter. It wasn’t a pretty sight, but better than she’d been expecting. Her shower though, had run out of her allotted bathroom time and into Ghosts. It wasn’t the first time it happened, but when it did, he would politely apologize and leave her to finish.

But now, dressed in joggers and a delightfully worn shirt, he hovers in the open doorway. She wonders if he feels it. The pull.

He’s about to turn and leave when Flash finds herself mumbling through a mouthful of toothpaste, “Don’t leave I’m almost done.” She’s not quite sure why she asks him to stay, but she does.

Flash can’t help but smile at the way his socked feet shuffle awkwardly against the tile, not sure where to stand. It’s incredibly sweet, and the softness of the action only strengthens the pull that begs her to step forward and into him.

“So,” Flash starts, spitting her toothpaste into the sink before continuing to lazily brush in half circles, “do I get to see your face now? Or is that something you reserve for people who are near death?” In one smooth movement, she’s resting on the counter in front of him, hoping the toothbrush hanging from her lips hides the wince as her sore muscles strain. “Ya know, like a ‘I can show you but then I’d have to kill you’ type a’ situation?”

Ghost is silent, unresponsive to her prodding. Any other night he would have told her to drop it and go to bed. Maybe give her a snarky response if she’s lucky. But tonight he’s quiet, just as before. And then she sees it. The way his shoulders curve inward and the flickering of his eyes as they move to look at anything that isn’t her.

“You know it's not your fault right?” Flash’s voice is soft, the same one she’d use to coax a scared dog from a corner.

“What?” A whisper.

“It’s not your fault.” She slides from the counter, leaving her toothbrush next to the basin, she walks quietly towards him. Cautious, slow enough for him to back away, she reaches up to brush a hand against his face. It’s a daring move but he doesn’t pull away.

The cotton of the mask is warm from being so close to the heated skin of his cheeks. Golden lashes brush against them and their freckled surface as his lids shutter closed. Flash drinks in the rare moment of softness. Her mind drifts back to her last few moments in the truck, how warm the skin of his face had been and suddenly, she’s never wanted anything more in her life.

“Can I touch-” Her words breathe out into the empty space between them and Ghost’s eyes fly open, wide and searching her own.

“Blindfold, I - can you wear a blindfold?” His words are stuttered and rushed with a desperation she can’t even begin to understand. Flash offers him a silent nod and then the space in front of her is empty.

She lifts herself back onto the counter, just to busy herself as she listens to the opening of a drawer and the quiet whisper of him digging through clothes in his room. He returns with a beautifully patterned terracotta scarf. Like the one’s she’d seen at the market. He sets it gently in her lap but she pushes it back into his hands.

“Here, you can tie it. So you know I’m not peeking.”

He nods once before taking the brown fabric with shaking hands and folding it into a neat strip and leaning in close to wrap it gently around her eyes. Flash senses his hesitation as he pauses before tying the knot. Wary of the bruise beneath her eye. She gives her best reassuring smile and it seems to do the trick.

“Is that too tight?” He whispers and Flash shivers as his breath fans across her ear, light and warm.

“No. It’s perfect.”

There’s a gentle rustle of fabric and then his mask is resting on her lap. Nerves beat her heart up into her throat.

“Are you scared?” Her whisper is careful, spoken into the quiet space between them. A question spoken to him but a silent admission of her own.

“Yes.”

“It's only me.” She can’t help but smile at his honesty.

“That’s what I’m scared of.”

“Can I touch you?” She murmurs, and he hums a confirmation. It’s a quiet, broken noise.

A soft sigh breaks the silence when the pads of her searching fingers meet his cheek and draw upwards to a rather prominent cheekbone. She can’t help but smile at the heat she feels beneath her fingers, he’s blushing.

Quick breaths come from his nose, followed by two long exhales. Subtle enough that if she weren’t inches from his face would have gone unnoticed, but his warm breath falls against the small strip of her cheeks left uncovered by the scarf. Her heart swells in her chest when she realizes he’s attempting to calm himself.

“Why do you keep trying?”

His words catch her off guard and her exploring fingers come to a halt at his browbone. A displeased huff urges them on and to a soft brow. Flash takes a moment to think, but it doesn’t take her long to find a response.

“Because you deserve to heal.” Ghost turns his head into her hand, muffling a groan. It’s a noise unlike anything she’s ever heard before. An amalgamation of sadness and desperation that makes the blood in her veins slow to listen.

“Has no one ever told you that?”

“No.” He speaks into her palm, hiding his face as if she could see him through the scarf.

“Well, you do.” She smiles softly and flinches in surprise when his thumb brushes against the soft skin of her lower lip. He pulls back quickly,

“Sorry, I-”

“No, you’re fine.” Flash reaches down and grabs for his hand, bringing his thumb up to her lips again when she finds it. He takes a shuddering breath and she wishes for just a moment that she could pull the blindfold up from her eyes and look at him, see the way his body is reacting to her touch, rather than feeling, and hearing it.

“Your smile.” His thumb parts the plush of her lips, so gently she almost doesn’t feel it.

“What about it?” She can’t help but laugh at his odd remark.

His face under her hand moves, and a familiar divot forms under her ring finger.

“Oh good lord you have dimples?” She breathes against his hand.

“Just on the left.” His words are murmured, shy if she thought he was capable of such an innocent emotion. And in the warm darkness of the bathroom, without seeing the scars on his hands or the dazed look his eyes so often held, she realizes just how innocent he is. The boyish way he holds her face, similar to the way a child learning to write struggles to grip a pencil. Like the concept of touching someone without the intent of harm is as foreign to him as a new language. And the realization absolutely crushes her.

“Freckles, dimples, blue eyes. You must be a real stunner.” She teases, an awful attempt to fight the burning behind her eyes. The skin beneath her hand warms again and the overwhelming urge to throw herself into him is consuming, to wrap herself so tightly around him that their skin fuses and they become one. The thought is as terrifying as it is tempting.

“Far from it.”

She frowns at his words but the hand on her face smooths her brow in a gentle caress. Her next exhale comes shakily through her nose.

Braving the waters, Flash traces up the soft curve of his cheek and her fingers catch on slightly raised skin, silkier than the rest, a scar. It travels from his left cheekbone to his hairline just above his eyebrow.

“How did this happen?” Her imploring question is light and spoken without pressure. He could leave it unanswered if he wished.

“My father.” His response is quiet but it’s a scream to her ears. Images of him as a child, a defenseless teen screaming as he clutched his head in pain fill her mind in a rush. She quickly moves on. Feeling for more, battle-oriented scars, but she feels none.

“Do you have any more?”

A rumbling laugh vibrates down her arm and warms her chest.

“Plenty. Although the reconstructive surgeries helped, there’s always going to be a mark.”

“Where?”

A gentle hand reaches for hers and guides her fingers in an arc from the corner of his mouth to a point near his hairline. She traces the spot over on her own until she feels the slight change in texture, the jagged shape that whatever had cut him left behind. She didn’t dare ask its origin.

“Your scars make mine seem like papercuts.” A nervous laugh blows past her lips.

“And I hope it stays that way.” He glides warm fingers just inches from the stitches on her temple. “You already have enough.”

“Nothing near as cool as yours.” She protests, tracing his cheek once more to emphasize her point.

The room is silent, and for just a moment, she thinks she's ruined it and then he’s laughing again. Stuttered like he hasn’t had enough practice, and Flash wishes he’d never stop.

“What?” She asks, incredulous.

“I’ve never had someone call my scars cool.” The stuttered laughs come through his nose now, in gentle breaths of air that warm her own cheeks.

Another mostly nervous laugh looses from her parted lips at the absurdity of their situation. If someone told her a year ago, as she unabashedly stared at Ghost giving his lecture, that she’d be on the counter of their shared bathroom, blindfolded and committing his face to memory with her hands she’d probably laugh. And then file a report.

Flash smiles shyly before bringing her other hand up to gently cup his face, eager to change the topic. “Is this normal?” She breathes as he leans further into her, now pressing against the counter space between her legs. Heat radiates from him, warming her in a way she’s never felt before.

“Is what normal?”

“Wanting to touch you so badly my chest aches.” The admission makes her heart stutter in embarrassment and something warm and syrupy slows the muscles of her mouth.

“I don’t think so.” His answer is mumbled, and before she can feel the sting of rejection, he’s pressing his forehead to hers in an almost feline gesture.

Their lips are just inches away, all she’d have to do is tilt her head up and they’d be kissing. The thought sends her heart thumping so painfully that her stomach rolls with nerves. Enough that she just savors the closeness they have already.

“I feel like I’m going to puke.” She whispers to him with a nervous smile and instantly regrets it. There’s just something about his presence that loosens her tongue in ways it shouldn’t.

But then Ghost is laughing again and pressing his forehead harder against her own. “Me too.”

And the confession is orchestral.

Her arms reach from where they’re pinned between them and up into the soft curls at the nape of his neck. A muffled moan is pressed into the skin of her neck so she does it again, a gentle scrape through his hair. Tremors wrack his body in waves. Then he’s pulling away and her hands are slipping from his shoulders too soon.

“Off the counter, face the mirror.” Although his voice is still soft and shaken, it’s demanding enough that Flash doesn’t protest. She feels him reach around her for something on the counter, muscled chest pressing close to her shoulder.

“I’m getting some deja vu.” Ghost’s murmur is quiet and entirely self-indulgent.

“To what?” Flash’s brows furrow in confusion under the soft silk.

“Well uh-” His words stumble out, unprepared. “That night you took that pill?”

Flash’s stomach sinks and her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth when she responds. “Uh-huh.”

“You were struggling a bit with cleaning the scratches. You couldn’t even hold the cloth.”

“Oh god.” Even with the scarf on her face, Flash still has to drop her head in her hands. “I didn’t do anything weird? Did I?” She thinks back to the table that morning, Soap's laughing and Ghost's not so subtle smile.

“No.” Ghost runs a finger slick with a paste that she quickly recognizes as the salve the doctor had given her for sore joints over her skin. Far from the scratches and cuts on her shoulders. She practically purrs at his touch combined with the cooling effect of the paste. “But you’re very touchy.”

Embarrassment floods hot through her chest and she starts to apologize but Ghost interrupts her again.

“Don’t apologize.” Those fingers drift up and to an unblemished space just past her shoulder. “Just be quiet and let me make up for my mistake.”

“You don’t have to-” Her words end in a sharp moan when his fingers dig into a tender spot against her neck. “Holy shit.” His fingers fumble a bit but he regains his composure quickly, returning back to the spot and rubbing delightful small circles against the knot. “Jesus-” Her mumbling is cut off with a soft hush and she finally gives in, dropping her chin to the heated skin of her chest as he loosens the muscles that had grown stiff after days in bed. When he reaches a spot along the arch of her spine, smoothing deep half circles into the muscle there, a broken whine falls involuntarily from her mouth. It’s entirely pathetic but she’s too far gone to care. This last sound seems to signal him though and he’s stepping back, dropping those magic hands from her lower back.

“Okay.” His voice is breathy ghost of a whisper and despite never seeing his face, Flash knows that if she were to pull the blindfold from her eyes, he’d be shaking and casting his eyes to the floor, those precious strawberry blonde curls falling across his forehead, and cheeks ruddy with the warm blush she’d felt just minutes before. But she leaves it tied neatly against her damp hair, even though her fingers itch to slide the soft fabric from her eyes.

There’s a rustling, Ghost is reaching past her to grab something from the counter and she can practically smell the anxiety leaking from his skin, along with something else she hadn’t noticed until now.

“Is that citrus?” She tries not to sound too surprised, she shouldn’t be. It had been one of the first things she’d noticed when flopping herself onto his bedding. Something she did not want to think about.

“It’s uh- oranges?” He sounds unsure, Flash is about to point this out but he continues. “My mum wore it.” There’s another brief pause. She can practically hear his internal debate over whether or not he should continue. “It’s- It helps with- anxiety.”

“Oh.” She stands there for another moment, not wanting to leave quite yet, but not having anything to say. He doesn’t move either, just stands quietly in front of her. “I like it.”

“Me too.”

Gentle fingers slide the scarf from her eyes, the light of the bathroom is blinding and she has to blink several times to clear the dots from her vision. When her eyes finally focus, she cranes her head upward from the soft cotton of his chest. Ghost’s eyes are staring into the mirror above her, at himself. There’s a small strip of exposed skin between his shirt and balaclava. She can see the collarbone that she’d whispered to so many nights ago.

“I’m going to bed.” She says to the strip, and without looking back at his face, turns and walks as calmly as she can to her room. Even though the racing of her heart screams at her to run, to hide, to grab him by his stupid masked face and kiss him.

The last thought scares her enough that she shuts the bathroom door with a bit too much force. The sound makes her jump. It’s entirely pathetic but the creeping sickness from this morning is gone, replaced with something much much worse. Something deadly, something terrifying, something that makes her want to laugh and cry. So she does both.

It doesn’t help.

_____

     Flash can’t wipe the love-sick smile off her face as she walks to their small kitchen. Her water bottle swinging in time with her steps.

“He won’t always be like that.”

The metal bottle clangs loudly against the concrete when her hand slackens in surprise.

“What?” She breathes, heart beating wildly in her chest.

“I said, he won't always be like that.” Soap says from the small couch in the ‘living room’. He’s draped himself lazily over the arm and is flicking through an old copy of the ‘New Yorker’. A cartoonish drawing of pointing Uncle Sam is printed on the front under bold red letters reading ‘I WANT YOU’.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She says calmly, swiping her bottle from the floor and continuing towards the sink, averting her eyes from the dramatic cartoon.

“Oh don’t play coy. You’re smiling like a fuckin’ teenager in love Lass. I know.” His tone isn’t accusing, if anything it's bored. Like he couldn’t be bothered to finish the conversation he’d started. “He’s true to his name. He’ll be kissing you like he needs you to breathe, and then the next mornin’ float right by you. Stings like a bitch. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“How do you know?” She asks over the flowing tap. “Did you two...” Her half question drifts, waiting for him to pick up. It takes the metal burning into her palm for Flash to realize the water is steaming, she tips the bottle over and starts again.

“Were we together?” He flips another page, casual, like he’s not admitting to fucking his best friend. “I guess you could call it that.”

“He wasn’t interested in that... stuff?” She thinks back to the way his hands trembled the first time he’d touched her, and the way he practically vibrates when their bodies come within inches of each other.

“No,” a devilish chuckle comes from behind the paper “we didn’t have trouble in that department.”

“So you were a thing?” She asks and is blindsided by a sudden burning in her chest. It curls around to tense the line of her shoulders, bringing them closer to her ears like raised hackles.

He finally lowers the magazine and shakes his head at her reaction. “No need to get possessive. It lasted about two months before he realized that fucking every ten minutes wouldn’t fix his shit load of issues.” His words immediately drench her in a cool wave, and an embarrassing guilt flushes high in her cheeks, along with a biting sympathy at his confession. “My feelings were unrequited, unfortunately.” He gives her a sad smile. “He needs someone who isn’t broken. He needs someone who can guide him out of the shit storm he’s been led into.” The magazine is flipped back open and brought back up, his tone turns curious. “Someone like you.”

She starts to deny, to tell him that she is far from unbroken, but Soap waves another hand at her.

“Don’t bother, I don’t care.” A plain lie. “I just wanted to warn you. He can be-” a pregnant pause splits his words, “he can be challenging. He’s got a cargo container of shit that he hasn’t even begun to unpack. It can lead to some pretty rough mood swings.” Soap puts the magazine back down. “What I’m trying to say is he’s a real piece of work, but if anyone deserves the help, it’s him. I just hope you’re the right person.”

Flash can hear the unspoken words ring through the air between them.

‘Because I wasn’t’

When Flash reaches Ghost’s door in the bathroom, away from the prying eyes still pretending to read the old magazine, she knocks softly, waits a few moments, and then knocks again. There’s no response.

He’s blocked himself off again.

Disappointed and trying not to think of Soap’s words, Flash slinks dejectedly back to lie in her bed. Her IPod still lay on her nightstand, nestled in the center of a neatly swirled nest of wires. Right where Ghost had put it her first night there.

Then for some reason, imagining him taking the time to do something so unimportant with so much care, for her no less, sends a wave of something nearing homesickness through her. A brittle sort of feeling. And for the first time in over five years, Flash has the urge to call her sister.

“This is not good.”

A/N: AHHH MY AWKWARD LITTLE BABIES. I hoped you loved this as much as I loved writing it. God I love unhinged relationships, they’re just *chefs kiss*.  

[3rdvoice]

Letter Column

I remember a while back somewhere seeing some concept sketches of an early Spondule and Navichet, and at the time you indicated that you were working on a much much shorter version of the comic than what you have now. My question is, was there any specific thing about the short comic that you were working on before that made you want to explore the world more? Or was it more along the lines of lots of really little things that interested you as a whole? Also, did you have to change the characterization of Spondule and Navi? Did you have to remove any characters that would not fit the story as it is now? - Louie * November 22, 2023

Yes I initially had S&N in my head as characters for a series of black-and-white graphic novels that were sort of self-contained. As I was coming up on the end of Vattu, I got together a coherent little pitch for a 200-250 page graphic novel, which overlaps significantly with the material now online as the “1st Passage.” Publisher was not interested in this book! Which was fine and kind of expected. And then I was in a sort of open-ended spot: Vattu would be ending, I was going to have the first Clean Break in years where I wasn’t working on anything at all, and I had to decide how to move forward career-wise !!

So I go back and forth about this a lot, between thinking about THE WORK and THE CAREER, that is, the material conditions that make it possible for me to make the work. I did feel, in developing the early S&N work, that there was potential for it to be a Bigger Thing. But it can only exist in the way that it’s possible for it to exist! It feels like it would’ve been useless to explore the idea of a much larger story if I was aiming to just pitch a self-contained graphic novel. But after the pitch fell through, I got obsessed with this idea of doing a really Maximalist self-published thing. I don’t know what to DO with my career but I know the sort of work I can make, and I figured I could double down on that in the most intense and enormous way possible, and HOPE FOR THE BEST?? So that was the context in which I started thinking about the bigger 3V thing, and I still don’t know if any of this makes sense career-wise, but it does at least feel like I’m making the best thing I can and as I move forward through it I’m building something that amounts to Some further stability for me to keep doing it. I dunno if that makes sense. I am lately just drifting away from the idea of art as the execution of an uncompromising vision. The whole thing is compromise! Would I be doing better work if I was independently wealthy or had a partner who made a lot of money or whatever and didn’t have to worry about fitting what I’m making into “the industry”? I don’t know! But every part of it is some sort of compromise!!

Characterization of S&N themselves has been pretty clear from the start, though they have gotten specified and the vibe has changed a bit as the setting shifted towards something denser and bleaker. Well I guess Navi is somewhat more affectless and inward-looking than she at first seemed. And the dynamic between the two of them has really clarified in ways that I didn’t foresee.

rice-boy.com

[smartcookieeatingherself]

2 things I don't get in heartstopper

First, I absolutely love the graphic novels and the show, the vibe, the community around it, and I think Alice is a very talented storyteller who obviously creates stories that make many queer and supportive people feel seen across generations. But there are two things I am missing in the plot to make the storyline cohesive.

First of all, Tara and Darcy's background story. I know there was a minicomic showing how they got locked in the practice room and ended up kissing, and as far as I remember, it described Tara disliking Dary for her loud, quircky, annoying personality (haven't read this in a while so my memory might as well be inaccurate) and suggesting a sort of enemies to lovers trope. They got into this game where one of them wanted to return a pen to the other and ended up fooling around with it, wanting to draw on each other, and then they kissed. To me, that was just way to little information to explain how they got into their relationship. While the graphic novel is a lot more focused on Nick and Charlie, I think the series could have given the space for them to properly narrate a relationship between the two that actually makes sense.

Secondly (and this only really applies to the show), dramaturgically it doesn't make sense to me how after Nick walks away from the rugby field on sportsday, taking charlies hand to tell him he doesn't want to break up and them kissing in the corridor the series doesn't show people gossiping about them. The world that the series models for them, where even though they are physically close with each other in school (not in a romantically affectionate way, but still), and they still largely come out on their own terms (of course the hickey made it more complicated and probably pushed Nick to come out during Taras birthday party), is just not realistic in my opinion. Alice, Kit and Joe have mentioned in many interviews that the series aims to portrait real life struggles and difficult topics through an optimistic lense which I do think overall is a very much needed approach. However, in the coming-out plotline which is a big theme of the second season, to me this idea is played out a bit too unrealistic.

So this turned out way longer than I aimed. Thanks for reading, I would love to discuss these points with you!

[e-adlirez]

Why are you this ick about the friendship things in the books? I mean, for a book series that aimed for preschooler shouldn't it be expected for the books to have a lot of corny messages about friendship and love? Like, I feel like you gave way too many expectations for a silly kid series

Okay yeah that's fair, maybe my expectations for the series is holding the bar a bit high, and it might just be a me thing (I could never get into MLP for the life of me)

But hear me okay

The reason I don't like the power of friendship being mentioned in the books is because it clashes with what I've seen of the series so far.

See one thing the books did very well was allow you to imagine that the girls are grown-ass adults in university. They are very good at selling the bit that the girls are adults, without infodumping the crap out of it. For the best look into how this is done, see graphic novels 1-4, as well as the main books that were done in the older artstyle. The way the books are written allows you to really believe these girls as grown adults-- there are occasions where the books' age sticks out a bit... too much, but most times, it's smooth sailing, and the girls are very believable as adults.

Case and point: I got into the books when I was eight years old, and one thing I appreciated and still appreciate about the older books is the fact that the immersion is on-point. The books are rated 6-10, but only in terms of the language level (it's short and easy to read is what I'm saying). The plots of the books are well-written, and most importantly, the books do not treat you like a kid as you're reading. You'd be surprised how valuable that is nowadays,,,

Even the friendship bits in the older books worked hard to sell the bit in a way that it fits with how the stories are written, which is very grounded and realistic, actually (minus the cheese puns):

The girls gave Thea a fancy jade and called her "the keeper of our friendship"? Friendship bracelet logic, which is a very valid logic. Colette's cousin mentions the girls' friendship? Well yeah, it makes sense in that scene because she's hosting a fashion walk, and the girls literally carried and were kinda the reason why Julie's finals project wasn't completely scrapped; that part where the friendship bit is mentioned is literally the perfect moment for a cheesy-ass speech. (There's a really good one in non-English Shipwreck too but that's a story for a whole 'nother day.) The way the plots are written is very down-to-earth and grounded, and the inclusions of the friendship bits back then reflect this. This was the way the bar was set for me, and thus it's how I judge the later books.

As the series progressed, things got more explicit with the age range. Nothing atrocious, but you could tell things were getting more and more openly kid-friendly. You know it's progressed when more than a handful of people mistake them for being highschoolers instead of grown-ass adults in university.

There is still action, and there is still adventure and shenanigans that you get fully immersed in, but if you're like me, you would be happily immersed in the adventure, trying to solve the mystery alongside the girls, but also hoping and praying to your holy deity of choice that a friendship bit doesn't come up in the year of our Lord 2024.

Only to die inside when it is brought up and the delivery sounds so blatantly sugary it can give you a cavity. The kind that hurts to see stick out like the sorest thumb.

So yeah, my standards might be high, but my standards are high because I've seen the series reach that bar before, and I know they can do it again. I am mentally ill for this franchise dammit /affectionate

[chaoscheebs]

So I've gotten into visual novels a bit more recently, do you have any recommendations? I've been a gamer all my life but vns are kind of a blind spot for me. Maybe some of the more popular ones on the DS and a handful of PC ones are about all I know.

Most of the ones I've played are adult ones (i.e. have sex scenes in them), but I can give some recs if that's not an issue.

All Ages:

-Jack Jeanne for the Switch is a really solid one and for something that includes hiding the protag's gender (she's in an all-boys school for theater), it doesn't fall into weird/horny tropes about it? Like no "oh no someone walked into me changing oh me oh my" nonsense, for example. Plus there's some characters that read very trans/gender non-conforming and I am living for it.

It's very slice-of-life, very pretty, and if you like/can work with stat-building dating sims and the rhythm game sections, I'd recommend it!

Guys Who Like Ladies (not all-ages):

--Princess Waltz is like my favorite VN of all time, it's so fucking good. It's about this (seemingly) normal dude who ends up entangled in this other magical world's tournament to pick a bride for the prince of a country in said other world, and boy howdy for something that is aimed at straight male audiences it is REALLY GAY (affectionate/positive).

The main "girl"? The prince. Who reallyreally comes off as a trans dude. It is awesome.

There's all sorts of cool fights, girls in cool/cute outfits, the "token loli" acts her actual age and is probably one of the most mature of the lot (god i love Suzushiro), it has Lun-Lun, the second best proper girl, yaoi fangirls, and a cute lil' dragon man.

I will provide a quick warning tho': it contains (accidental, they had NO IDEA beforehand) incest, potential adoptive sibling banging, and depending on how you see Chris, potentially misgendering. :c

If you can get past that, tho', it's fantastic and has a bangin' soundtrack.

--9-nine is a urban fantasy-ish multiverse-spanning mystery series in 5 parts: 4 for each girl and one extra epilogue game that wraps up the loose ends nicely. It also contains cool action scenes, has a great cast of characters, and even makes a Wild Arms 2 reference, which cements it in my heart forever.

Each game is a route, and while you could skip one and still get the story (and you might want to, one of the games focuses on the protag's main full-blooded sister who, uh, yeah, they eventually bang), but each part connects to the next and gives you more information to piece together, and it all comes together wonderfully. ;A;

Also, the male lead has a face, is voiced, and has a personality, which is a rare triple-crown in the VN world when it comes to het-focus stuff.

9-nine also has an "all-ages" cut, which can be found on Steam, if that makes a difference.

QUEER SHIT FUCK YEAH:

--Ne no Kami is a yuri VN which is in two parts (with a loosely-connected "prequel" that is plot-light called Sacrament of the Zodiac and has a successor plot-heavy series that has one part out called Watamari, all of which are yuri stores) and IT. IS. SO. FUCKING. GOOD. It and Princess Waltz battle for my heart for the number 1 spot.

The protag is a "normal" girl named Len, who gets drawn into this secret war against the ayakashi thanks to a mix of her childhood friend coming back into her life and her parents up and disappearing on her, and it gets... the actual images are never graphic in the violence sense, but it gets a bit brutal in the fight scenes. Which fucking rule.

It's a good balance of slice of life and battles (and girls kissing other girls of course) and the music fucking rules.

There is also an "all-ages" cut on Steam.

--No,Thank You!! is a BL VN, and it is also really good, but really fucking heavy and I have to give several caveats before recommending it. There is references to (and at least one on-screen instance of) rape, references to in-universe snuff films, non-consensual body modification to the point of body horror, drugs, and child trafficking, tho' everything mentioned past the rape is never shown on-screen.

If your can get past all that, you're in for a wild fucking ride. Haru is the (openly bi!!!!!) protagonist, who seemingly got amnesia in an accident saving this middle-aged man, and so the middle aged man, who is the protag of his own story that's interwoven in the background as he searches for his missing son and dips his toes into some Serious Shit(tm) as a result, sees to it that Haru has shelter and a job until he recovers.

Also, yakuza and a secret underground society that does Seriously Fucked-Up Shit(tm) are all interwoven into the plot, especially the latter.

Also Hiroyuki is best boy I make the rules.

--------

Anyway, that should be a pretty good starter kit. I'd also throw in Yume Miru Kusuri, which is a more grounded in realism story, but also it's really meta and not a good starter VN (... although it was MY starter VN, please give me a route for the canon gay dude in a fan disc I am begging you). It also. Um. Deals with heavy subjects (bullying, drug use...). So maybe see how you feel about these before that.

[semper-legens]

76. Crumbs, by Danie Stirling

Owned: No, library Page count: 383 My summary: Ray has a favourite order at her local bakery - tea with a side of Romance. When she catches the eye of Laurie, the musician-turned-barista behind the bar, there’s a spark between them instantly. But it’s never that simple when magic is on the cards. Ray is a seer, aiming for a job on the Council; the Council who must erase themselves from the memories of anyone they used to know. And Laurie wants to get serious with his music. Will they be able to make it work, or is love not possible for someone with ambitions? My rating: 4/5 My commentary:

I read this one before - for some reason, I was thinking of it recently, and lo and behold, there it was sitting on the shelves for me to reread. It's a charming little story, one that was a Webtoon before being collected into a graphic novel format. A tale of love and loss and tough choices; a coming-of-age narrative in more ways than one. It's also the right kind of length to read in one sitting, which is handy for me - I really like that in a graphic novel. I was utterly charmed by it again, and I'd recommend checking it out.

In my earlier post, I didn't really give much time to the art, so I'm going to talk about it now! It's very colourful, with a mystic kind of haze over it and a lot of rounded lines. I keep saying the word 'charming', but that's really what it was, it was charming in its presentation. I wasn't sure, however, if some of the art didn't suffer a bit from being upscaled into a print comic format? Some of the haziness that I had assumed was stylistic came across at times as blurriness, and I didn't really see why that was being used. It wasn't too distracting, it was just something I noticed. Other than that, though, it's gorgeous art, and in particular the artist really makes the baked goods and coffee Ray gets at the bakery look very appealing.

Ray and Laurie are very believable characters. Caught in the awkward young adult stage where you're just kind of coasting by and figuring out who you are and what you want from the rest of your life, they're trying their hardest to make it in their respective paths. Laurie wants to be a musician, while Ray wants to be on the Council. But both of those ambitions come with problems. Laurie, as I said in my earlier post, was very relatable to me - he wants to be all things to all people, but this is often at the expense of his own happiness, and he doesn't ask for help or rely on others easily. Ray, on the other hand, wants to follow the path that was set out for her by her gifts - she wants to do Great Things, but cannot quite accept that placing herself where her abilities will be most useful is not the most glamorous of work. These are both really credible experiences for people at that age and in that position in life, and seeing Ray mature enough to go on and do great things or Laurie be able to reach out and be more honest about how he feels and when he's struggling is immensely satisfying.

I also like the worldbuilding here - there's very little exposition or explanation, and when it happens it's mostly organic and comes up naturally over the course of the narrative. This is a strength of the graphic novel format, I feel, elements can be introduced purely visually and the reader can intuit what's going on. Like the phones, for example - phones in this setting seem to be inhabited by little familiar spirits that can compose messages and set reminders for you, which is never explained, but we see it happening a few times and get the gist. Or how Ray's order at the bakery is Romance; we're never quite told that it's enchanted, but we understand it from context. As an overly wordy bastard who tends to write prose exclusively, I am jealous.

Next…a little book from a being named Bill.

[chloesolace]

Book Review: "Tender is the Flesh" by Agustina Bazterrica

Spoiler-free

Genre: dystopian, science fiction, psychological • Word Count: 62k • Triggers: extreme gore, cannibalism, animal cruelty, uncomfortable sexual scenes?? • Year of Publication: 2017

Plot: ★★★★★

Characters: ★★★

Writing Style: ★★★

Re-Readability: ★

all my reviews - blog navigation

General Thoughts

In a world where a virus has made all contact with animals dangerous to humans, cannibalism has been legalized and institutionalized as a means to survive.

This premise sounds extremely promising for a work that aims to criticize not only society but human nature as whole, and offers a unique setting for an interesting novel.

I like to think of myself as someone who is not easily shocked. This book shocked me. Saw is one of my favorite franchises, so is The Silence of the Lambs series. I consume horror and gore on a daily basis, however this book did something to me that made me put it down multiple times. I found myself unable to continue it until I finally finished it a few days ago. I left it on my bookshelf untouched for a few months since I started reading it. But let's get into the detailed ratings.

Plot

I like the plot, a lot. I gave it five stars because it is unique, it is thought-provoking, and it is controversial. I have never read anything like it before and most likely never will, and that alone is interesting and worth quite a few stars to me. It challenges the authority we have given ourselves over animals. I am not vegan, I am not even vegetarian, but that book almost turned me into one. It is not a book that you pick up and read while humming to yourself by the pool with the sun shining above you and birds chirping around you. Let's look at the blurb.

"Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans—though no one calls them that anymore.

His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.

Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved."

Going into it, I knew it would be graphic from what I had already read about the book, but I never would have imagined just how graphic it would get. All the processing that is done is described in greatest detail, and the dehumanizing name - "heads" - used for the people that are being slaughtered makes it all the more uncomfortable. Marcos, our protagonist who works at one of these processing plants, is then gifted a female head, one born in one of the breeding centers. He does not kill her, though. Instead, he begins an affair with her, which is one of the worst crimes one could commit in this society. The narration treats 'Jasmine' - as he later calls her - like an animal, using verbs and adjectives one might not necessarily use to describe human action. It is Marcos who humanizes her, in a way, giving the novel hope for a happy ending despite the fact you can already guess how this story will conclude.

Marcos was married before to a woman named Cecilia, but after their child passed away as a baby they went their own ways. The death of his son weighs heavy on Marcos, and in Jasmine he sees a second chance at being a father; she becomes pregnant.

It is the ending that shocked me. This is a spoiler-free review, so I only aim to give you guys recommendations for books without taking away all the fun, so I won't get into it more. However, it is an ending that leaves the reader sitting in silence, staring at the pages and thinking to themselves "what the hell even happened here?"

Characters

Marcos is written to be quite human and realistic, with many flaws which made him both unlikeable and at times unbearable. Except that one time when he played with some puppies he found, because I would have done the same, to be honest. Dangerous virus be damned.

There is not a single character in this book I would consider good-natured on a moral scale, but perhaps it is exactly what makes it so engaging to read. The characters in the book serve as a substitute for animals not only in the meat industry; an animal's prime aim is to secure the preservation of its own species. Marcos is doing exactly that, both biologically and socially.

One of the most important settings in the novel is an abandoned zoo, yet it almost feels like the characters in the book are the zoo animals themselves, and the reader is observing them destroy each other. I did not like the characters, but I did not have to like them to enjoy the story for what it is.

Writing Style

Now, before I get into this, I would like to say that I acknowledge that every writer has a different writing style and that it is entirely subjective whether I like it or not. Personally, I like descriptive, sometimes even a bit flowery prose with long sentences. But this would have been out of place for this book.

The sentences are direct and straight to the point. There is nothing hidden behind metaphors, it is exactly like the processing farm portrayed: honest, raw, and uncensored.

It is not my favorite style of writing, hence the missing two stars, but for the type of novel this is, it is more than fitting.

Re-Readability

For this point, I simply have to say this is not a novel I will ever re-read. Reading it once has left enough of an impression to let it stay on my bookshelf and never touch it again. For me it is too uncomfortable and too disturbing to do so. Still, it has left a huge mark on me and I will most likely be thinking about this book for quite a while. The one star is by no means intended to be negative.

Conclusion

All in all, I would say if you're a horror fan or a fan of stories that criticize society, this is the book for you. However, do keep the trigger warnings and extreme graphic descriptions in mind when choosing to read it. And perhaps do not have that steak beforehand.

[thegeminisage]

STAR TREK MASTERPOST

hi my name is liz and i'm watching the entirety of star trek in release order, so this post was SIGH inevitable. i will edit with updates it as i make more

FANFIC

Gambler's Knife - AOS, Spirk, 22k. Twelve years after Tarsus IV and three months after dying to realign the warp core and save his ship, Jim Kirk seems to have a new lease on life: he's been resurrected, started pursuing a tentative new relationship with Spock, and has an entire five-year mission ahead of him. That is, until the attempted murder of an old friend forces him to divert the Enterprise away from her intended course and towards Planet Q. After a chance encounter on the planet's surface, new secrets about Jim's time on Tarsus IV come to light—secrets that threaten to destroy everyone he fought to protect, and the new life he's finally achieved. Some things you carry with you wherever you go.

SKIP/WATCH LIST

as i watch star trek, i am making an incredibly detailed spreadsheet which aims to guide new people into what to watch...or what not to watch. this list includes every single movie and tv series (including the animated ones), multiple watch orders (release order vs chronological order), runtimes, content warnings, and indicators on which characters feature in which episodes + indicators on which episodes are important for continuity. the only catch is i am updating it as i go, so it's a verrry slow work in progress. i've also still got a few blanks in the tos bit.

currently the only tumblr post with a link is this one, but i'll make a better post once i've finished going back and filling in the blanks on the tos section.

SPOCKANALIA DIGITIZATION

@maulthots and i are working on digitizing all 5 volumes of SPOCKANALIA - retyping text, cleaning up images, and adding alt text. they'll be added here as we complete them.

Volume 1

EPISODE REWRITES

sometimes star trek makes me crazy and i wanna fix it, but i don't have the time or patience to rewrite it in fic form so we get tumblr posts instead. they are in the order that i did them. right now there are only a few but i want to do like a thousand

[tos] the motion picture

[tos] the tholian web

[tng] violations

META

these are mostly small posts for now. someday i might make big ones.

marrying a vulcan is not unlike being a horsegirl

tos kirk vs aos kirk on retirement and the infinity of the universe

tos spock vs aos spock on love and death being real

tos spock vs aos spock on becoming close to one parent but remaining forever separated from the other

kirk and bones react differenly to spock showing emotion

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE SPACE BABES - kirk's encounters with women are often nonconsensual (collaboration with @maulthots)

funniest possible pre-mcspirk situation in aos

aos plot devices we could have had

small post about vulcans getting drunk on chocolate the first time

GRAPHICS

most of these are shitposts.

spock in shades for my header

"then perish" tas bones meme

spones graphic for wrath of khan/search for spock

CLIPS

i make clip shows sometimes.

bones being possessed in search for spock

tos scenes that remind me of tarsus iv

kirk insults spock for a minute and a half

kirk reacting to spock's emotions vs bones reacting to spock's emotions

STAR TREK TAGS

#tos -the original series

#tas - the animated series

#tmp - the motion picture

#wok - the wrath of khan

#sfs - the search for spock

#tvh - the voyage home

#tff - the final frontier

#tuc - the undiscovered country

#tng - the next generation

#ds9 - deep space nine

#aos - collective tag for the kelvin timeline movies

#st books - posts about the star trek novels

#st comics - posts about the star trek comics

#vintage trek - anything from before the turn of the century

#spockanalia - post about spockanalia, an early spock-centric fanzine

#spirk - kirk/spock

#spones - spock/bones

#mckirk - kirk/bones

#mcspirk - spock/kirk/bones

#st fav - fav star trek posts

LIVEBLOG TAGS

this includes the series AND the novelizations, if/when applicable - i am working my way through the tos movie novelizations and i want to read more. also, spockanalia <3

#tos lb - the original series liveblog (technically i didn't start liveblogging it until late into the series. rip)

#tas lb - the animated series liveblog

#tmp lb - the motion picture liveblog

#wok lb - wrath of khan liveblog

#sfs lb - search for spock liveblog

#tvh lb - the voyage home liveblog

#tff lb - the final frontier liveblog

#tuc lb - the undiscovered country liveblog

#tng lb - the next generation liveblog

#ds9 lb - deep space nine liveblog

#aos lb - the kelvin timeline movies (not much here because i wasn't star trek posting back when they came out)

#spockanalia lb - spockanalia

#star trek blogging - all of the above put together

MISC

my top 10 and worst 10 tos episodes

non-exhaustive list of youtube videos of vintage trek commercials, feel free to add your own

funny and unhelpful version of the skip/watch list i used with friends ie my only true record of tos first impressions

star tos "episode sorter" to rate every episode from best to worst

tos episodes on a tier maker

[his-endless-rambles]

I’ve worked a lot of jobs in my life—many of them customer-facing—but I gotta say I’ve never had more of a blast interacting with the general public than working at a library. You get all sorts coming through and the exchanges are varied. Some are good, some are bad, but they are almost always memorable.

Here is one of my favourites.

By all accounts, it was a pretty average day. Scanning, shelving, reserving—the usual. Then here comes this brick wall of a man. And when I call him a brick wall I am not exaggerating. The thickness of his arms and the width of his shoulders would make a barricade blush. Fella straight up looked like this:

Anyway, he comes up to the desk, puts both hands on it, and leans forward. His face is now inches from mine. He’s breathing exclusively out of his nostrils, the heat of each breath cooking the air. Paired with the vacant look in his eye, he’s like a bull ready to charge. Then he lifts a meaty finger, unfurls his lips, and in a thick Eastern European accent asks:

“Do you have any One Piece?”

It takes a second or two for me to register what he said and a few seconds more to believe I heard it. Then, I try my best to do my job. I’m not 100% sure so I type it into the database. Until the search has loaded, I don’t break eye contact, and when I do, a lump climbs into my throat.

“No. I’m afraid the few copies we have are already borrowed. Do you want me to make a reservation?”

He shakes his head, then says. “What about Na-Ru-To.” He sounds it out just like that. Na Ru To.

I check the database. There are three copies available. “We have volumes 50, 51, and 61 accessible at this library.”

He doesn’t reply. He’s too busy aiming his burly body in the direction of the graphic novels section.

Less than five minutes pass before he comes back, and with him, he brings a veritable bounty of manga. His palms, wider than the shelves themselves, are stacked high with not just Naruto but everything from My Hero Academia to D.Gray Man.

He notices me eyeing his haul and clears his throat. “I like One Piece and Na Ru To,” he says. “They are my favourites. But, I have been told to read more If I am able.”

I ask the man for his library card. He shakes his head and says he will be paying with cash. This is not the first time I’ve served someone who’s assumed the need for money in a public library so I explain to him that he can get a library card and take books out for free. What happens next is one of the reasons I love being a librarian.

His eyes widen and a smile cracks across his face. “This is very good.”

I smile back and tell him that if he likes I can reserve some volumes of One Piece to be transferred to this library for him. A light dances across his gaze and his crack of a smile splits into a chasmic grin.

“You are a very good man!” he declares. “I give you big thank you!”

It takes no time at all to find the volumes he wants and even less to scan his pile. Soon enough, the man has his books, has his reservations, and to my joy, still has his smile.

“I come back for One Piece!” he says gleefully. “I see you soon, yes?”

Then he struts away swinging a canvas bag stuffed with manga like it weighs as much as it did empty.

It didn’t matter what happened during the rest of that day, or even the rest of that week. The genuine smile of that giant manga-loving man carried me through it all.

[transxfiles]

gonna go on a little mini tangent about nimona movie adaptation. it's gonna include lots of spoilers for the graphic novel so if you haven't read it yet (and you should!!) you can just scroll past spoiler free <3 anyways,

first off i am SO fucking pumped up about the nimona movie this is doing things to my middle school heart you have no idea <3 <3 <3 they're definitely branding it in the area of that kind of edgy but family friendly movie vibe that's been popular with certain projects lately (low key some parts of the trailer were giving me mitchells versus the machines while others were giving me the same energy as the bad guys, which is an interesting mix imo they're both good animated movies from the recent past but at the same time they're both tonally different in many ways not to mention very different tonally from the original nimona comic imo) and basically where i'm going with this is i hope they keep the original tone of the comic. the graphic novel does a really great job of shifting between lighthearted comedy and the complex emotions of the characters really well, especially with the twist at the end where we find out that nimona has been lying about her past the entire time (OGH that ending is SO GOOD it gives me chills just remembering the panel where we find out the story about the dragonslayer going after the shapeshifter and the rumors that the shapeshifter TOOK THE DRAGONSLAYERS PLACE??? AUGH those panels are burned into my mind forever). basically i am a little worried because of the marketing that they might soften the darkness associated with nimona's past/backstory or even change it entirely, but of course that's all speculation bc they could literally just be doing what the comic did which was market itself as really upbeat and silly modern fairytale twist and then turn around and make everything really fucking dark as the novel approaches the end of the second act and the beginning of the first act.

also when it comes to the character designs i am OBSESSED with blackheart and goldenloin the designs are SO!!!! not to mention the setting itself, they're definitely leaning into the futuristic aspect but i hope they keep a lot of the down to earth fantasy elements from the comic as well, i feel like nate did a really great job creating a world that is such a unique blend of ren fair fantasy tropes (for lack of a better term) and magical high tech inventions and it's something that i really hope doesn't get lost in the translation to the screen. obviously i can imagine that the show-y-ness of a cyberpunk-esque world is very visually appealing and also probably pretty fun to animate but i'm hoping they're teasing a lot of those dystopian sci fi visuals for the trailer because they get ppls attention and then they bring in a similar mix of the ren fair fantasy elements from the comic.

i hope they maintain nimona's whole gender vibe as the same sort of fluid energy that i got from her in the book, idk if it was just me but nimona reads as not only gnc but as a very nonbinary/genderfluid character and i always thought it was really cool how ready she was to shapeshift to different gender presentations in the comic.

this is more just on the curious musings side but i also wonder if they'll do the little bit where she dyes her hair purple?? its such a weird little moment in the comic i could see them deciding not to put it on screen but i think it'd be a cute nod to the book. or maybe they do a little bit of dialogue where she mentions to blackheart that she's thinking about changing her hair color and mentions purple, it'd just be cute i think <3

uhhh yeah i guess my biggest wonder about the movie rn is just how dark they're willing to take it, tonally? because the book gets DARK and ofc it's also aimed kinda at middle grade, just like the movie is, but what's allowed in middle grade books is very different from what's marketable in a middle grade family friend film. i really do hope they do the whole dark underbelly of the kingdom reveal, though, and the second act arc where nimona's true violent and chaotic nature starts to spiral out of ballister's control, and of course the unethical experimentation and the legend of the shapeshifter and nimona's entire story to ballister being a lie.....

AUGH i am going to get so emotional about this movie but yeah <3

basically. NIMONA MOVIE AT LAST!!!!!!!!!!

[duckprintspress]

“Aim For The Heart” Creator Spotlight: Author Catherine E. Green and Artist Cris Alborja

There’s only a few days left in the campaign to crowdfund Aim For The Heart: Queer Fanworks Inspired by Alexandre Dumas’s “The Three Musketeers” – gosh, I can’t believe it’s almost over already. Here’s our last two-fer creator spotlight! 😀

Want to get a copy? Make sure you back before the campaign ends at 10 AM Eastern on July 15th, 2023!

Start your engines by Cris Alborja

About the Artist: I’m an illustration and comic artist from Spain. I’ve got a nursing degree, but I decided to pursue my passion. I have studied Illustration at EASD Pablo Picasso in A Coruña and comics at O Garaxe Hermético in Pontevedra. I have done cover art for an anthology called Infiniteca by Retranca Editorial and comics for Altar Mutante, Nai dos Desterrados, and Abraxas en Cuarentena fanzines, as well as in Gaspariño 21 by Retranca Editorial.

Link: Instagram

The Serendipity of a Late Train by Catherine E. Green

About the Author: Catherine E. Green (pronouns: xe/xem/xyr or they/them/their) is an agender person, one who’s had an on-again, off-again love affair with writing. Xe began writing when xe was a wee thing, when xyr other major pastimes were playing xyr mother’s NES and roughhousing with the boys next door. It’s only in the past few years that they have begun writing consistently and publishing their writing, fanfiction and original writing alike, leading to their first published short story titled “Of Loops and Weaves.”

Outside of writing, xe is a collector of books and sleep debt and an avid admirer of the cosmos. Playing video games, reading a variety of fiction genres (primarily fantasy, queer romance, and manga and graphic novels of all kinds), and working on wrangling their own personal data archiving projects occupy most of their free time. Xe has also started meeting up with a local fiber arts group and is excited to be crocheting xyr first scarf.

Story Teaser:

Oh, no. This is not happening.

Athos picks up the threads of Porthos’ insults. “One has to wonder if this is the same girl who gave me lip for interrupting her, frankly, dangerous stunts? Weaving sloppily through bunches of brand-new skaters, nearly bowling into several of them, and then acting like it was no big deal?”

“Excuse me?” Lottie replies, sharp and in disbelief.

Aramis starts in, “Or the girl who arrives late to tryouts—”

“It’s not my fault the train out of Gascony was late!”

“—and then proceeds to make a huge commotion thereafter. No doubt, a calm, polite conversation with our NSOs would have sufficed,” Aramis finishes, nonplussed.

“Don’t forget: this is the girl who insulted my plumage!” Porthos cries, gripping said rainbow-colored plumage to her chest.

Lottie raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me for mentioning it was a tripping hazard.”

“Like you’re one one to talk, girlie!”

[shallow-between-stars]

Bestie, Bestie;

My favourite book is The Count of Monte Cristo. I usually reread Austen once a year. I have the Complete Works of William Shakespeare in a very well-thumbed coffee table book.

I am an English teacher. I literally spent last term teaching EAL/D kids all the English words they needed to analyse English Literature and made them do it over and over again until they were prepared to face Year 11 (Junior equivalent) English courses.

ACOTAR and Sherlock Holmes share shelf space in my home library. I suffered through both Twilight and the first Fifty Shades book.

I both read and write fanfiction for a range of media types; and have since I was 14, so for 22 years.

AND the last book I finished reading was about Octagenarian Witches who were Quite Gay (tm) dealing with the fallout of a heist they'd pulled that had gone Quite Badly (tm) twenty years ago; while also trying to save their home from a predatory, misogynistic land baron.

Quite frankly - I have read the shittiest, dullest, most derivative books for adults and the most magical, thought provoking and carefully plotted books for youngsters. I have also read some absolute shit for young adults and some beautifully polished gems for adults.

My second favourite book is a picture book called "The Rabbits" which is a metaphor for the invasion of Australia by Colonists in the 1800s and is aimed at children aged 4-8.

I cannot stand Tim Winton or Bryce Courtenay, and frankly struggle with Tolkien that isn't The Hobbit.

Here's the thing

Whether it's for adults or children or somewhere in-between does not fucking matter one jot.

Being a pretentious snob about books makes others feel shame about what they are reading and does the exact opposite of your goal, bestie. They don't read 'better' books, books that you think they should read...

... they stop reading altogether.

Honestly, I am a HUGE advocate for graphic novels and analysing young adult fiction in schools, particularly language schools. I got my kids reading (and adoring) Wings of Fire in graphic novel form, and they moved on to it in novel form at their own pace. (Given that they are non-native speakers of English, HELL YEAH I am proud of all of them for recreationally reading in English, even if they never got to the "no pictures" stage) They LOVE it. They read and analysed an excerpt from "Flipped" as their final exam for the semester. They also read a language-modified version of Ray Bradbury's "The Veldt" as practice for said exam, because it's a fucked-up little story that's great for teaching foreshadowing; despite the fact that Bradbury was a wanker.

You should never shame someone's reading choices - you should meet them at their level, find out what piques their interest and direct them to more complex forms of the same.

And honestly - I can teach metaphor just as well with The Rabbits (along with the themes of displacement, colonialisation, invasion and genocide) as I can with Animal Farm; and guess which one the kids respond to better? And then once they've got the topic down, we can push into applying those themes to advertisements and campaigning as easily as if we used a harder book; mostly because nearly all of political campaigning and advertisement is written at an 8th grade level.

No babe it’s so cool and hot that you always insist that fantasy books written to meet a 4th graders’ comprehension skills have more complex themes and a greater sense of praxis than anything written for adults

[ushioliddell-blog]

Ask game :)List 5 things that make you happy and then ask this question to the last 10 people who liked and reblogged things from you.

-Webtoons, webnovel and mangas (make me pratice my English everyday. Make me buy the webtoon when it come in a paper version in French to support it. But not liking it when names are too complicated to memorize. My currently favorite trope ? A supposed reincarnated villainess (previous life in this body or in other world ) try to change her destiny. I made fun in a past of a serie of cliches novels (Harlequin collection, if you know ) but the truth is I m not better than people who read it since liké them, it's almost Always the same trope XD ).

-Fanfictions (currently starving to read the next chapters of two fics.... but waiting patiently.... )

-Fantasy setting in stories (Can read almost everything if in it it has magic, dragons, creatures.... And if fantasy is the most important. But I dont really like science fiction mixed with fantasy. The only Books of science fiction I love are dystopias ).

-Writing. I wrote things since i'm really young. Had written in the past poems,tragedy, fanfictions, my own fantasy projects. Never publish any of them (except my fanfictions ). I Always have scenes in my head about them. Currently things about my project (my AU Détroit becomes human x QSMP ) and a fantasy story that is for now just a story in my brain ).

-Videos Games. Especially games with a story liké Mass Effect or Life is strange. RPG like Pokemon or Honkai Star Rail, where it requieres only my brain and not any skills. I m not good at competitive or shooting games. My aim is really low. XD Beat them all like Genshin or Honkai (impact and star Rail ) I learned to like them when I learned how to beat the bosses and now that I have some good teams ( Navia, Furina Raiden Xghongli is pretty good but my favorite is Xiangling Kuki Barbara and the delivery girl in Inazuma. This team......Can resist many Machines ruins, I promise ! An another I have with Thomas, the little adept girl, Fischl and the heir in Liyue ). And....cozy chill game with cute graphics, Stardew in it, (but the Skull Crânes....anger me each time, currently ). MMO but I like to play......alone. so not really what it was supposed to be. I m Always picking classes with heal to not rely on anyone. XD And.. Adventure games. Or hybrid games with this tags. Pure survival game can bore me easily.

Bonus :

Books. I love books and their stories. I realize recently I am always picking books with darker settings than my sister and mother (who loves romance and stories set in villages, secret family, legacy of families...) or my friend. Cozy stories, easy romance, not my cup of team XD I love fantasy, magic, stories with heroes and villains not so cliches, Adventure mixed with romance. I love old Books too. One of my favorite author is Émile Zola, for instance. (And a darker setting, in it. Especially in Rougon Macquart cycle. Tell the story of a family and how their vice run in it. Each Time a character has no vices.....he died XD Told you it was dark setting ). But I dont like polars, stories with aliens, and pure science fiction novels.

[starlit-mansion]

okokok. i am not entirely sure i have ever seen you talk about this and how dividing the books all are is fascinating to me so... what's the opinion on the novel trilogy, or even frights/tales if you're willing to touch that w/ a ten foot pole --scrappedbaby

I feel like this is a pretty controversial take but I think the Silver Eyes itself is… fine. Okay, I tried to actually read it once and I couldn't get more than a couple pages in, because it read like when someone posts their homework assignment that was secretly fanfiction on fanfiction dot net. I have a little bit of a soft spot for the graphic novel, actually, due to it being bad in an interesting way rather than blandly decent like the other 2, which I've only flipped through. (Also the shitty saturated coloring fucked over the inks. Setting aside any opinions of the artist as a person, i think her style has character and added something to the series that is still present in other parts I like much better, like the glamrock concepts. And the muted test pages that someone scrounged up from a trade show copy or whatever would have probably done wonders for the atmosphere.)

As for the story of TSE itself… Idk, I think it's kind of funny that it's Stephen King's IT for fourth graders. Also, because it's aimed at that demographic, they had to conjure a young protagonist from somewhere, and I think the concept is pretty solid, and Charlie's a good character, and I'm also fond of what a little freak Dave-era William is. That's really my favorite concept of the villain motivation in the series, actually: creating this twisted little dollhouse to go sit in and pretend to be a robot. The immortality/mad science/lich/trancendance from the flesh thing is… it's fine. I made my peace with it. But it's a little too Herbert West for my tastes. (Also like… this is why I like Glitchtrap. He's kind of doing the same thing, making is little diorama and reliving his glory days.) All in all, for what it is, a solid 7/10, imo.

As for the rest of the trilogy……. ah, it's not for me. Like I said, I've flipped through the graphic novels a bit, and own them secondhand as curiosity pieces/weird little relics, but it seems like it gets up its own ass to cater to people who like lore (a separate but related demographic as people who like the horror part of the games, in my 100% honest opinion). I hear about the illusion disks and I am austin walker's iconic "do you ever see a take so bad you immediately have to go to sleep?' tweet.

As for Fazbear Frights: I'm not gonna lie, i think it's pretty good. I feel so fondly about the ghostwritten chapterbooks of my youth (I was a Babysitter's Club and Animorphs girlie, and weirdly… not an inaccurate cross-section for Fazbear's Frights), and I think it's perfectly fine to play around in the universe and create a bunch of AUs and related concepts. Is there criticism to be had of the stories themselves? SURE. They're very weak on diversity, QUITE fatphobic at times, and some of them are unnecessarily ghoulish, though there's only so much disgust I can muster for undeserved child death in the child death series… NONE of them deserve it, even the ones that are mean to their siblings or too vain or whatever, and the fact that it's equally likely for any given story to end in brutal death or "wow I really learned my lesson!" is actually pretty fun. Reminds me of Goosebumps a bit (though I was never a huge fan. Too easily creeped. That was my brother's preferred ghostwritten series though, so I sampled here and there. I also somehow had my hands on a novelization of one of the Tales from the Crypt movies too, and that made a big impression).

I don't love that FF takes every fan theory and milks it, and I'm sure the process for actual production has some ethical problems based on everything I know about the industry. But I do firmly believe that a little body horror is good for the youths, and just making it a multiverse rather than sticking to any one canonical thread lets you have your animatronic rabbit and wear it too, as it were. I also kind of like the lower middle class vibe that the series has… There's very frequently a sense of economic desperation and cheap escapism that resonates so well with the games, and reminds me of how going to Chuck E Cheese truly was the marquee birthday activity of my youth (though I liked the arcade more than the animatronics as a wee millenial).

Part of my fondness for FF is just that I had 2 months during late quarantine where I would buy a copy of the next one I hadn't read while I was doing my weekly grocery/target run and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE OUTSIDE OF MY HOME, and I would read these very unchallenging short stories and be like "I liked that one! …I did NOT care for that one" and it was a little pumpkin full of meat to chew on in my cage. I stopped it pretty abruptly when the proof of Scott's Republican political donations came out (I mostly do not buy any new fnaf items now, though I have ended up doing it here and there, and I mostly class it on the scale of like, buying Overwatch microtransactions even though activision blizzard is a shitty abusive company or smth. Not a moral good, but not on a "funding a person actively involved in politically crushing trans people" level of problematic).

As for the stories themselves, I liked Into The Pit (it really reads like a reused movie script, but in a good way), Count The Ways (a friend of mine, iirc, did NOT like the two non-title stories in vol 1, but I have a soft spot for Funtime Freddy's villain era in that one, and Millie's safe and self-inflicted teenage self pity reads as an affectionate self-callout to me), Out of Stock (this one's just so CLASSIC kiddie horror and also a really good use of an otherwise forgettable part of canon), Room for One More (another good use of forgettable parts of canon, i think the series really shines when it clicks into stuff like that), Coming Home (the jewel of the series, and gets me in the Sixth Sense nostalgia too), Bunny Call (mostly forgettable obvious moral lesson story with a surprising twist of poignency in the middle and an iconic antagonist), The Man in Room 1280 (I wish this was better utilized in the game series, it feels like Security Breach juked around this concept for a much worse and dumber version, and also Andrew is my special little bastard child), and The Real Jake (a sweet, if maybe a bit maudlin, exporation of the deeper concepts in the lore that is solidly a cut above the average FF story, and i like the stitchwraith parts of the books too).

There's none that I have a huge hate-on for, though I thought 1:35 am in particular was VERY bad (I skimmed the last half). While it's notorious, to me, In The Flesh is just dorky, particularly fatphobic and I don't know how everyone is getting MatPat from it. Mat's persona is kind of smug, but not cruel and hateful towards women or a shitty friend (if anything, his peers speak SO warmly of him that makes me give him more credit than he deserves as a cc), and you'd think a real hit piece on him would involve... a theory. A G A M E theory. Okay, I did it the legally required time.

I stopped at Book #6 and i'm not sure if i'll ever go back. I just got a library card so maybe I'll get around to it the next time i'm sucked into the franchise, but for the most part, I'm dormant except for things I really adore about the series (Springtrap, the Funtimes, Afton Family Drama in general, nostalgia for the first few games, etc), so I can't muster up too many more opinions on middle reader books as a 34-year-old. Tales has no appeal to me even as a future "maybe if the fixation hits hard" option, because a bunch of satellite stories around a setting that couldn't muster a third act in the tentpole game is just. Sad.